This blog is one more tool of Democracy in DiEM25 in the pursuit of a profound democratisation of Diem25. It is open to everyone who is willing to cooperate in the struggle for democracy in Diem25, In Europe and in the world at large.

Alex & his team from the DSC Leipzig are standing for the elections in order to really do coordination work, not political work. They don’t want to push their own agenda – they want their program to come from the DSCs – but instead be a coordinating force that keeps the other CC members on the coordinating path & creates a better communication between CC & members.

Why aren’t they on the website yet?

→ No application done yet because there were problems with their video but they will apply in the next two days.

Questions about the constellation (three people represented by one in the CC):

– How do you plan to react if a question is asked you didn’t yet discuss with your team?

→ Splitting is necessary: the workload (e.g. e-mails) will be shared but decisions stay within Alex’ responsibility.

→ That’s also where the veto position (control function) is important, so that there is no possibility of setting an agenda before members are being asked about it.

– How would you answer a case of exclusion on the ground of being more than one person applying?

→ It is one person applying with a backup of two people (the Pressenza group was allowed to apply too).

– The candidates to face in the election are strong opponents: Do you have any other plans to promote your agenda?

→ Yes, they are but that’s no reason for not applying! It’s very important for the internal democracy.

→ And to clarify: It’s not a run between Yanis & the rest & it’s not a run against Yanis. And it’s not a hopeless application because there is a real hunger in DiEM25 for exactly the things Alex & his team are proposing (democracy, representation, transparency, more connection between CC & grassroots, the policy of politics).

→ There shouldn’t be too much promoting outside the official channel for that would be quite the opposite of how Alex & his team understand a democratic election procedure but there will be a small text translated into different languages to send to DSCs for promotion.

Agreed upon: We are in the same line as Alex & his team.

Questions about DiD backing Alex & his team:

– Should DiD stay neutral or should it officially support Alex & his team?

– Any way how DiD could support Alex & his team in being elected?

Thoughts:

– It’s one thing to go to our own DSCs & tell them to vote for Alex & his team – it’s another thing to officially back them as DiD: Our neutrality as well as the neutrality of Alex & his team would be in question.

– But DiD could take a stand concerning ideas & not a particular candidate.

Answers from Alex:

– They do not intend to get officially supported by DiD for the same reasons mentioned above. But it could be very helpful to be promoted in the DSCs & maybe get some help with translations (Pedrojuán: French).

Thoughts about the elections in general:

– How the candidates stepping down have been chosen we do not know (Adam could ask how it was done) so this it is a matter of missing transparency & not a proof of the intention of the members of the CC to get the same CC as before.

– Nonetheless it was striking that the argument in the announcement of the six members stepping down was that they did so as a democratic gesture.

– But we shouldn’t overrate it – we can’t do anything about it, so we should mention it nicely in our report, but not discuss it again & again & waste precious meeting time over that.

Referendum:

– General thoughts about the referendum:

– The e-mails written by DSCs suggest that after Berlin all thought that the referendum would be about whether DiEM25 should become a party or not.

– There’s a problem with the nature of how the consultation was put forward itself. But the CC/volunteer coordinators are not going to listen to critique concerning this, so we should just put it into our first DiD Report.

– Is it even formally correct what is happening?

– A lot depends on timing: We should comment on questions as soon they are there. They asked for feedback so DiD should give it & not just concentrate on the Café. The problem there is that the questions evolved over a certain time, so one doesn’t really know on what to comment.

Letter from the DSC Lyon:

– The DSC Lyon asked for more discussion time before the referendum takes place. Quite a few DSCs supported it although there are a few disagreements. But this is the most important decision for DiEM25 yet so the timeframe is essential.

– Should DiD sign this letter too (if they haven’t send it yet)?

– Or should DiD write its own statement, separated from the Lyon-letter?

→ It would be counterproductive to write our own letter – there’s enough confusion already.

Proposal: The letter from Lyon & our own are both there already. What we have to agree upon in this meeting is if we want to put either the Lyon-letter or our own to the whole DiD group for voting & therefore start an urgent procedure to decide if DiD will sign a letter to the CC as a group. The urgent procedure will be posted in Slack tomorrow.

→ A = put the Lyon-letter out

→ B = put our own letter out

→ C = do nothing

>> Vote: 5 votes for A, 0 votes for B, 1 votes for C

How shall we treat the survey results? Shall we make them public & if where, how & in what form?

Pedrojuán explains that a few meetings ago a decision was made that DiD would publish the results of the survey in the raw form & after that there would be an analysis from a group or single person.

Proposal: The combined results in numbers (Excel file) will be signed by DiD as a group, the analysis (Word file) will be signed by Lea & maybe Amedeo & Pedrojuán.

Question: Could some of the members present read the Word document & comment on it before it’s going to be published?

→ Pedrojuán & Philipp will try to do so.

→ Amedeo thinks it’s fine.

Decision: Both, Excel & Word file will be published in form of a Blog post next week at the latest (when Lea is happy with them).